Skylon Restaurant to open at Royal Festival Hall

Located on level three of the refurbished Royal Festival Hall, Skylon will offer a spectacular panorama of London's skyline with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the River Thames.

The restaurant is named after the celebrated towering metal sculpture designed by Powell and Moya which, like the Royal Festival Hall, was one of the centrepieces of the 1951 Festival of Britain.

Skylon will open in May, ahead of the full reopening of the concert venue in June.

Finnish-born Helena Puolakka will be Skylon's executive chef. She was previously executive chef at Harvey Nichols' Fifth Floor Restaurant.

The food will be modern European with British influences. Sample dishes will include new season pea soup with Yorkshire ham tartine; roast organic Suffolk Cross lamb, crushed new potatoes, glazed carrots and rosemary jus; lavender infused Gloucester Old Spot with farm vegetables, Mustard sauce; scone bread and butter pudding, vanilla custard.

"I'm so excited to be joining Skylon," says Helena Puolakka.

"It's always been my dream to be involved with the launch of a restaurant on such a grand scale. I am also looking forward to sourcing seasonal ingredients from Europe."

Conran & Partners has designed the interiors and graphics for Skylon.

Last September Conran Holdings sold 49 per cent of Conran Restaurants to a management team led by chairman Des Gunewardena and chief executive David Loewi.

Recently they announced a rebrand of the company – which also owns the cluster of restaurants at Butler's Wharf including Le Pont de la Tour and Cantina del Ponte – to D&D London.